Study faults pay practice at schools

Base workers' salaries on performance, not entitlement, group says.

TOPHER SANDERS

The Duval County school system needs to shift from a culture of salary entitlement to a culture in which employees are paid for how they perform, according to a compensation study by The Alliance for World Class Education and Duval schools.

The alliance, a nonprofit local education fund, presented the study's findings to district officials last week.

The study's author spent a year reviewing 75 administrative-level positions and 32 secretary positions. Teachers and principals weren't part of the study.

The alliance has teamed with the school system in the past to review business practices, most recently in 2007 for Project INVEST, which looked at the district's payroll, payables and investments.

The district needs to implement pay-for-performance guidelines and collapse its pay scales, the study's authors said.

Under a pay-for-performance framework, high performers would get pay bumps, but merely satisfactory employees wouldn't necessarily receive pay raises, said the study's chairwoman, Gloria Chandler, who is director of compensation for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Florida.

"And that seemed to be unconscionable within the district's staff, that a person would not get a pay raise," Chandler told board members. "That's part of that culture shift to change management."

The study also determined good teachers are too often taken out of classrooms for higher-paying manager positions for which they aren't always qualified, managers aren't held accountable for personnel costs and employee performance reviews were missing.

Putting the plan into work will take "managerial courage" on the part of the district, Chandler said.

In some cases, employees receiving demotions also should get pay cuts.

"Bringing those people into range not only speaks for the integrity of the system, but it can also raise morale because people know when others are being paid too much for the job that they are doing," said Preston Haskell, board chairman for the alliance.

The study's authors were impressed with the district's performance evaluation tool, but they questioned whether managers were properly trained to use the tool.

The study also found managers aren't being held accountability for personnel costs.

"If you're going to give them the flexibility to give employees various levels of increases, they've also got to be responsible for those salary dollars," said Ron Floyd, one of the study's authors and director of compensation for Baptist Health.